The world has four great museum collections of lace and one of them is at the Textilmuseum St. Gallen. The exhibition now on at the Bard Graduate Center presents more than 150 examples of the finest handmade needle and bobbin lace—all from St. Gallen—dating back to the art’s beginnings in the 1500s. The pieces are awe-inspiring, testament to the creative power of the human hand—particularly the female hand. They also speak to a different sort of power—the status of those who wore this lace. It wasn’t called “white gold” for nothing. —Laura Jacobs